• octopus_ink
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    9 months ago

    I swear to God there were pictures of people at Jan 6 wearing “Better Dead than Red” shirts, of the sort that have been around since at least the 80s if not earlier. Expected, predictable, cold war era bumper sticker phrasing on a shirt that I’m pretty sure I’ve been seeing worn by roughly the same kind of personality all this time. The kind of personality who was still calling Russians “the commies” ten years ago.

    It’s as if the right forgot all their decades of being ready to kill Russians/Soviets at the drop of a hat, to immediately turn Putin into one of their folk heroes. I get that’s the power of corruption but like - do we just pretend this wasn’t the most vocally anti-Russian segment of US society up until roughly 4 years ago?

    • EisFrei@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia

    • schnokobaer@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      that’s the power of corruption

      mostly St Petersburg bot farms I’d say. Corruption at the top of the GOP helps but that’s not what turns millions of people around in a couple of years.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      They were never “anti-Russia.” They were anti-Soviet. Russia flipped from communism to fascism, so they flipped from hating to loving it.

      There’s a lot of things that are inconsistent and hypocritical about conservatives, but their attitude towards Russia isn’t one of them.

      • octopus_ink
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        9 months ago

        I have many recollections of conservatives in my sphere not distinguishing Russia from the USSR, so we have had different experiences in this regard.